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Again and again, defects in government aircraft cause ridicule and moments of shock among those involved. Now the foreign minister’s traveling party has been hit again. A brief breakdown history.
The German foreign ministers are on the road a lot because of their office. Mostly by plane. It’s nice when everything goes smoothly and you can at best relax a little during the often long flight times including the time difference. It sucks when things don’t go smoothly. And often things don’t go smoothly. Breakdowns and defects in German government aircraft regularly cause ridicule and embarrassment, and presumably also cause shock for those involved in the air.
Now Annalena Baerbock’s travel company has been hit again. It was only in May that the foreign minister was stranded in Qatar because of a wheel defect on a government airbus. Now Baerbock has to interrupt her trip to Australia. Because of a mechanical problem, she is stuck in Abu Dhabi for the time being. One of the two rear landing flaps is defective. The captain said he has been a pilot for 35 years and has been with the Air Mission for 30 years. Such an error had not occurred in the whole time.
A machine with a breakdown history
The machine is 23 years old. She first flew for Lufthansa and then for the German Armed Forces. For a time it bore the name of Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic.
It is the same machine that former Chancellor Angela Merkel and then Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) had to use to turn back in November 2018 on their way to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. The plane had to make an emergency landing in Cologne-Bonn. At that time, the entire radio system failed due to a maintenance error. The reason was a defective electronic distribution box to which several systems were attached. Both flew straight to Argentina – mockery included.
Rodents stop Scholz
In October 2018, rodents also nibbled important cables of the “Adenauer” during a stop in Indonesia. At that time, Scholz returned by scheduled flight from the International Monetary Fund meeting. In December 2016, then Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) got stranded on her way to Mali. Because of a computer problem with her A340 in the Nigerian capital Abuja, she had to stay there overnight.
Minor glitches have been increasing recently on the A340. The Air Force wants to phase out the two aging A340 government aircraft as soon as the successor models, the A350, are fully equipped. Baerbock’s most recent flight to Australia was originally planned with the sister aircraft of the former “Konrad Adenauer”, an almost identical A340-300. However, this one was also broken.
Stranded in Nigeria
Other types of aircraft in the government fleet are also causing problems. For example, the “Global 6000” machines, twin-engine jets from the manufacturer Bombardier, of which the flight service has three in its inventory. They are still relatively new and were only delivered in 2019. At the beginning of June this year, the State Secretary in the Defense Ministry, Siemtje Möller, was stranded in the Nigerien capital Niamey because several cracks were discovered in the windscreen. The reason was probably the heat.
Trouble-free and modern to South America and back
At the beginning of the year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was on the road with the new government aircraft. The Airbus A350-900 is the first aircraft of this type with full VIP equipment for the Bundeswehr flight readiness and is therefore considered their new “Air Force One”. The trip to South America went smoothly. The white aircraft with black, red and gold stripes and the inscription “Federal Republic of Germany” is 67 meters long, 960 kilometers per hour, flies more than 13,000 meters high and can reach any destination in the world without a stopover.
The “Konrad Adenauer” is the second of a total of three A350-900 aircraft to be put into service by the Air Force. The first – the “Kurt Schumacher” – has been flying for two years, but has no special VIP equipment for chancellors, ministers or the federal president. Now there is a separate area for each boss on the plane with a bedroom and bathroom as well as a lounge area. The Bundestag had approved 1.2 billion euros for the three machines.